Usually, Milwaukee’s Washington Park Senior Center is abuzz with meetings and activities, things like Medicare open enrollment or lunch at the dining hall. But ahead of every holiday season, the center gets transformed for a fashion show.
Seniors are wearing sequins, tiaras, jewelry, bright colors, bold prints, hats, even feathers.
Bobby Thompson is the organizer. She’s wearing an elegant black dress with silvery bejeweled sunglasses and a small silver sequined clutch purse. She calls it "after five" attire.
Bobby set up this fashion show because — as she tells it — when she started coming to the senior center about 10 years ago, seniors would be “all dressed up with no place to go.” She says they needed a place to shine.
Cue the fashion show. It’s been happening every year, with a pause due to COVID. People sign up to model outfits in five categories: ethnic prints, sportswear, church wear, dressy and "after five."
This year, on Nov. 20, more than 40 people signed up to walk the runway. Some dance, some saunter slowly, others use walkers. Bobby wants them to do it their way. "[To] show other people that they can move, because age is nothing but a number," she says.
Caroline Carter is one of the first to walk in the ethnic fits category. She’s a raw vegan chef.
"Here [at the center] every Thursday, I give a healthy smoothie class to the seniors from 6 to 7 p.m. and I volunteer here every Tuesday," she says.
She’s in African print with yellow and green stripes, blue patterns and a sparkly sequined top. And she just turned 66. "It is just beautiful to age and everything is right. You know, when I was younger, it wasn't. But this is it, 66," she says.
She says she feels the best she’s ever felt.
"I used to be almost 300 pounds, suffered from depression, a lot of stuff, right?" Carter says. "And people see me now, and they was like, ‘Caroline, you look so good.’ And I say back, my response: ‘Ask me how I feel.’ You know what I'm saying?"
She says looks can be deceiving. "How many of us walk around every day looking good, but feeling awful. And I used to do that — looked okay, but felt horrible on the inside. Now, I feel good," she says.
The evidence is in her runway strut style. "Listen, I can't move it and strut like I did when I was 33 or 43 but 63, you just go with the flow of the dress, the music, the energy, the feel, that's the strut," says Carter.
As the music moves on from African drum rhythms to church music, Pastor Jeanetta Perry starts groovin’ down the runway to the gospel hit "Long As I’ve Got King Jesus."
She has a beautiful salmon pink suit with silver jewelry. She’s also wearing cat-eye glasses with purple and gold flecks.
"Listen, we go to church, we dress. I used to dress in the world, but I dress better in the house of God. Now I switched partners," Perry says.
How did she choose her outfit? "Well, I always have dressed, and my daughter helps me as well. She dresses as well. My family is a dresser. My mother was a dresser. So it just come naturally," says Perry.
"I don't like the word old," she says. "I like the word mature. We've been through life. Some of us are 60, 70, 80, 90, and to have this fashion show — it inspires us to keep going. So it's a blessing."
She says you've got to keep going, and look good while you're doing it.
